By Theresa Rodewald. Could be an enjoyable action thriller [but] jumps between locations, plot points, and flashbacks without ever deciding which story to tell.” The Virtuoso (Anson Mount), an enigmatic hitman, lives a solitary life in the woods. After a mission goes awry, the Virtuoso reluctantly accepts a mysterious job, […]
Shadows: Bela Lugosi on the Hungarian Silent Screen
Lugosi and Ila Lóth in a Hungarian silent film, possibly Leoni Leo (Leo Leoni, 1917)
Fans Only: The Super-Human Muddle of Mortal Kombat
By Elias Savada. It’s part origin story and part training film, where some of the warriors have to awaken his or her arcana, the energy within their soul that imbues them with special powers. Players know the term. I didn’t.” I am not the target audience for this film. Pac-Man, […]
The Experimental Past – 3-D Rarities: Volume 2
El corazón y la espada (The Sword of Granada), 1953
Bummer: Craig Pryce’s The Marijuana Conspiracy
By Elias Savada. As The Marijuana Conspiracy pushes toward its hazy end, the drugged-out zombies don’t seem to be as energetic or fun-loving as at the beginning.” I suspect the last thing you want to do in a light cannabis dramedy about the “weed with roots in hell” — a […]
The Courier, or the Ongoing Uses of the Cold War
By Christopher Sharrett. The Courier has some touching moments…. but we should keep in mind that there is much more to this story.” As the Soviet Union crumbled in the late 1980s, some U.S. politicians talked about a “peace dividend,” that is, the possibility that money, for years thrown at […]
Possibilities of Post-Cinema: Discorrelated Images
Blade Runner 2049 (Denis Villeneuve, 2017)
Deep in the Heart of McConaughey: Greenlights (a Memoir)
By Louis J. Wasser. Decidedly the memoir of a confident and determined man – one who, after minimal dilly-dallying at a yellow light, finds his way to the next significant greenlight in his life and acting career.” When noted actor Matthew McConaughey alerts us, “this is not a traditional memoir,” […]
Beer Lovers Rejoice! Even the Rest of You Can Enjoy Brewmance
By Elias Savada. The film is a light approach to what goes into the process of building a vision: a brewery, a name, a way of life.” In the world of beer-centric documentaries, Brewmance is the latest and one of the most effervescent salutes to fine craft libations, yet also […]
The Play’s the Thing: Jacques Rivette’s Céline and Julie Go Boating
By Jeremy Carr. Make-believe and storytelling are not only central to the shared and exclusive lives of the film’s fanciful female leads, but are devices ratified and dissected at every turn of the movie’s wonderfully screwy scenario.” There is a repeated refrain heard throughout Adrian Martin’s predictably perceptive commentary on […]